Gradient Animation Control

[3deeguy]

I'm looking for 'any' suggestion that would help me get the effect I'm after. I'm rusty because I've away for so long but this is a project that I 'really' want to do.
You can see in the smartbone cycle animation that the radial gradient glitches. It looks like I can't use onion skins to copy a radial gradient. I'm hoping there are, at least, some keyboard shortcuts that I can use to flip quickly from the first frame to the last frame. I'm using version 9.5.
I 'know' I can use layers or shapes to create a 'spherical' effect.
If the advice, in this case, is to abandon animated gradients I'll move on to creating the spherical effect with layers and shapes. My thanks for any tips.

[synthsin75]

Just looks like the start and end of the cycle aren't matched. Not sure what you mean by using onionskin, but you should be able to copy/paste the first keyframe to the end.
Hard to tell exactly what else might be going on from just the video.

[3deeguy]

...but you should be able to copy/paste the first keyframe to the end.
Hard to tell exactly what else might be going on from just the video.

Thank you. At least now I know that I'm not banging my head against a wall.
I didn't say what the project was because it's far from finished. The large oval shape will be a DIY 'turbine' rotated 45 degrees so that the viewer can see the hollow inside the 'cups' that catch the steam to rotate the 'turbine'.

[slowtiger]

I'd go for a simple approach: do a circle with the gradient and import it as bitmap (masked in the blade), so I can control it's placement very exactly.

[3deeguy]

I'd go for a simple approach: do a circle with the gradient and import it as bitmap (masked in the blade), so I can control it's placement very exactly.

Excellent idea. I prefer simplicity. I've already started over with a new file. Point translation was a second source of problems. I also want the spherical shape of the blades to remain stable so I decided to switch to layer translation.
I'm working on one bug at a time. I want the light to come from the same direction. After that I'll work on scaling the blades to give a sense of perspective.

[slowtiger]

Re scaling for perspective: I'm a big fan of guide layers. In this case I'd create a layer with 12 circles in a circle (in a new project), then tilt that layer and play with camera distance and lens angle until I get the perspective I want. Render this, import as image under the turbine, and adjust the blade sizes accordingly.

[Greenlaw]

+1 for the guide layer suggestions...I make guide layers all the time, really speeds up the rigging and animation processes. The suggestion for using an image in place of a grad effect is good too if you're not planning extreme scaling or zooming during animation.

I'm still hoping to see shift-key constrain added for the Gradient and Image Texture Effect widget. It's a pain trying to precisely align the widget for Smart Bone animations, especially in a full body turn. Setting up the wraparound textures in my Puss rig is a good example. This 'simple' setup for the torso took longer than it should have because I didn't have shift-constrain available and had to make a lot of extra trial and error animation renders to check the alignment. (Using a drawn guides layer helps in these situations but with no snapping available, the solution is limited.)

TBH, I'd like to see the effects system reworked in a future version of Moho to make the features more directly interactive with more precise controls.

[slowtiger]

That's the inherent problem of the vector animation aesthetics: if the lines are so clean and the movement so smooth, you'd expect the same from gradients and everything. Right now I have the job to color something in TVPaint, tedious work, and they want shadows and gradients. I do them by hand, with airbrush, as exact as I can, but of course they always boil a little bit. In this case they want exactly this effect. In fast movements nobody notices, it's only visible in slow movements.

[3deeguy]

Re scaling for perspective: I'm a big fan of guide layers. In this case I'd create a layer with 12 circles in a circle (in a new project), then tilt that layer and play with camera distance and lens angle until I get the perspective I want. Render this, import as image under the turbine, and adjust the blade sizes accordingly.

You drew a diagram of a guide layer for me and explained how to use it back when I was a beginner. That taught me how to keep the animated part of a scene properly scaled to the vanishing point in the scene. Regarding what you just wrote, I decided from this point on, to place helpful bits of information like this in a folder so I can refer to them. Thank you.

[slowtiger]

*blush*
"And when I go, I will go with the warm feeling that somewhere, on someone's computer, there will still be a folder holding my wisdom for futuere generations ..."
Sounds like a last act scene in some cheesy animated feature ... it's not only kung fu moves in a secret scroll.

[3deeguy]

"And when I go, I will go with the warm feeling that somewhere, on someone's computer, there will still be a folder holding my wisdom for futuere generations ..."

It was key to understanding animation. It is as important as learning a walk cycle. Professional animators understand 'motion'.

[SuperSGL]

I to have had this glitch. My final credits on my name have a scrolling linear gradient; just a thin white line in the middle of a color ( which I saved s a style so I could change the color easily) It scrolls up inside of a text layer. When it repeats the cycle I see the glitch. I was just thinking of revisiting this maybe making the middle color thinner when I saw this post.

[sang820]

The simplest and safest way is:
[Each gradient graphic has a separate layer] + layer binding.

good luck